Matt Yglesias

35 Responses to “How Did This Happen?”

1. Don SinFalta Says:
   October 24th, 2008 at 10:39 am

   Frankly, I found the video rather pathetic. It comes across just as blatantly partisan as the right-wing efforts to dodge the blame. Why? Because it’s a bunch of assertions of how conservative ideology is bad, backed up by nothing in the way of an explanation or supporting facts. I guess if you’re trying to make something this short it’s hard to do much, but stuff like this just helps make the whole discussion look like partisan finger-pointing and, in my view, does more to help conservatives make their arguments than to refute them.

2. Don Williams Says:
   October 24th, 2008 at 10:47 am

   I think the video is a decent start –provided it runs on network TV in prime time.

   I think it could be improved by a “Hang the lying Republican cocksuckers!” segment but that’s just my opinion.

   The RNC wouldn’t have time to distract the voters with bullshit like “Ayers the Terrorist” if they were fleeing an angry mob.

3. Don Williams Says:
   October 24th, 2008 at 10:49 am

   Also, you need more video excerpts of Republicans expounding their bullshit. At least one of John McCain’s Economic Advisor Phil Gramm saying the financial problem was all in our heads.

4. Don Williams Says:
   October 24th, 2008 at 10:55 am

   By the way, something not mentioned in the news media. Latest Fed Release yesterday showed banks etc borrowing from the Fed has increased from $167 Billion last month to almost $700 Billion! as of yesterday.

   See http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h3/Current/ —

   make column 3 a positive value and add it to column 2 to get total borrowing.

   The “collateral” backing those “loans” ? Described by one analyst as everything up to and including “old lawn furniture”.

5. Mike Says:
   October 24th, 2008 at 10:56 am

   So the goal is now to just score political points, not figure out the truth? Victory at any cost, I guess.

6. Don Williams Says:
   October 24th, 2008 at 10:58 am

   Re Mike;s comment “So the goal is now to just score political points, not figure out the truth?”
   ———-
   How about you arrange for Fox News to lead the Truth Search Expedition.

7. Matt Says:
   October 24th, 2008 at 11:00 am

   The video makes some good points, but it’s completely ruined by the narrator. He’s got this insincere, lecturing-a-classroom-of-fourth-graders tone that isn’t going to convince anybody.

8. Don Williams Says:
   October 24th, 2008 at 11:02 am

   Re “The video itself is just one part of the new How Did This Happen? website ”
   ————-
   And the traffic there is …what?? 10 or 15 voters per day?

   In a perfect world, MoveOn etc would be beating the Republicans like a rented mule.

   Unfortunately, all the political donations seem to have been Hoovered up by Obama’s $600 Million “Let’s Sing Kumbaya” Fund.

9. Michael T Sweeney Says:
   October 24th, 2008 at 11:08 am

   People are stopping you on the street? I didn’t realize you were that recognizable! I would figure half the people stopping you thought you were Colin Meloy.

10. Mike Says:
    October 24th, 2008 at 11:18 am

    How about you arrange for Fox News to lead the Truth Search Expedition.

    So it’s all or nothing, eh? No nuance? No ambiguity? Either you believe Bush & McCain did it all or you must be a ditto head just waiting to bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran?

11. Don Williams Says:
    October 24th, 2008 at 11:21 am

    Re Mike’s “So it’s all or nothing, eh? No nuance? No ambiguity? ”
    ———–
    Al Gore and John Kerry’s inarticulate “nuance and ambiguity” are what elected George W Bush twice.

12. Mike Says:
    October 24th, 2008 at 11:29 am

    Al Gore and John Kerry’s inarticulate “nuance and ambiguity” are what elected George W Bush twice.

    So you’re saying, yes, victory at any cost. Good politics I guess, but it won’t help anyone pay their mortgage.

13. Matt K Says:
    October 24th, 2008 at 11:31 am

    This is truly pathetic. If the Democrats want to be known as a party of ideas, and CAP wants to be known as a place where such ideas are promulgated, they will need to do better than this. There are no facts presented, just ideology, and running pictures of unpopular political figures. This approach might seem clever now, but it’s too easy, and frankly simple-minded, to work beyond election day.

14. Don Williams Says:
    October 24th, 2008 at 11:32 am

    As Catholic Archbishop Arnaud Amalric said

    “Tuez-les tous; Dieu reconnaitra les siens.”

    (Kill them all; for the Lord knoweth them that are His.)

15. Don Williams Says:
    October 24th, 2008 at 11:37 am

    Re Mike’s “Good politics I guess, but it won’t help anyone pay their mortgage.”
    ————
    Neither will stealing $1.5 TRILLION of their wages and giving them to Wall Street investment banks.

    Neither will stealing $3 TRILLION of their Social Security/Medicare deposits and giving it to the rich as a tax cut — with $1 Trillion going to give Houston Iraq’s oil deposits.

16. Don Williams Says:
    October 24th, 2008 at 11:41 am

    Re Matt K’s comment “This is truly pathetic. If the Democrats want to be known as a party of ideas, ”
    ————–
    I thought the Democrats were known as the party of pathetic, ineffectual , cowardly losers who have been bitch-slapped by Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Fox News for the past 10 years.

17. Ticktockman Says:
    October 24th, 2008 at 12:03 pm

    The video isn’t very good. The narrator is poor, and while it may have been built soundbite brief to accomodate current attention spans, its points won’t come across as authoritative to anyone not already convinced. Since Greenspan is briefly featured here, a very simple addition would be to add footage of his recent admission of failure of his ideology.

    -TTm

18. No Comment Says:
    October 24th, 2008 at 12:23 pm

    This is truly pathetic. If the Democrats want to be known as a party of ideas, and CAP wants to be known as a place where such ideas are promulgated, they will need to do better than this. There are no facts presented, just ideology, and running pictures of unpopular political figures.

    Exactly. All the video does is assert that the government “looked the other way” and “loosened regulations” and that this is somehow connected to the Wall Street crash. There’s nothing in there about which regulations were loosened and how those are related to the current crash. Nor is there anything about what sort of oversight would have prevented the problem and how it would have done so. Or about what CAP thinks should be done to fix things now.

    When Matt said there was a brief video explaining the crisis, my reaction was “great, because I don’t understand anything about it!” This video did absolutely nothing to enhance my understanding.

19. mike Says:
    October 24th, 2008 at 12:45 pm

    You tell ‘em, Don Williams! It doesn’t matter if it’s true, only that it’s on message!

20. S. P. Gass Says:
    October 24th, 2008 at 9:20 pm

    I found this article on Drudge, written by a Democrat. Do you agree?

21. forgotmyotherpenname Says:
    October 25th, 2008 at 12:28 am

    @SPGass
    I agree that that is an article.
    It’s by Orson Scott Card, who may be a (sometimes) great writer, but he has zero credibility as a thinker (unless you think, say, Jonah Goldberg has credibility).
    He may be a nominal Democrat (yeah, and I’m an ‘Independent’), but he advocates policies that are the same as those that Joe Random Assshole Republican would advocate.
    He’s a Mormon, and according the intertub, he’s a Yes on (Cal.) Prop 8 Mormon, so whatever his pretense to rational thought, you’d be just as well off talking to a cabbage, or reading Drudge. Oh, wait….

22. datadave Says:
    October 26th, 2008 at 12:03 am

    I found the video simple and to the point and accurately Non-Partisan. It condemned the ‘conservative agenda’ Not just Republicans.

    Both Parties have villians involved in this mess, W Bush and D Cheney, frickin’ Phill Gramm esp, and Reagan’s ghost: Alan Greenspan on the Repug side…but Bill Clinton, Robert Rubin, Senator Schumer and Larry Summers have got big putzes in the Party of Blame too for the Dem. side. They are all ‘conservatives’ in the sense of they were in the game of protecting people with high indexes of unearned income…remember selling the Lincoln bedroom?

    As any Wall Streeter will tell you, the ’street’ is remarkedly Bi-Partisan with it being approx. being half and half Dem/Rep.

    It’s only a little more than a minute long…does anyone expect a treatise or even a wikipedea article out of that length of video? The fact that thoughtful and reactive exclamations of difference in opinons erupted from watching the video…perhaps suggest it is successful in making people see the present ‘collapse’ in a less partisan way and more as a problem of ideology.

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